The City watchdog has fined a former Deutsche Bank trader £180,000 and banned him from financial activity for manipulating Libor interest rates.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) sanctioned Guillaume Adolph, who worked at the German lender as a short-term interest rate derivatives trader, specialising in Swiss Franc and Japanese Yen Libor.

It found that between 2008 and 2010, Mr Adolph made requests to Deutsche’s Swiss Franc Libor submitters to adjust their submissions to benefit his trading positions.

Mr Adolph’s misconduct threatened the integrity of important benchmarks. He should have no further role in the financial services industry
Mark Steward, director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA

He also took his own trading positions into account when acting as Deutsche’s primary Yen Libor submitter and improperly agreed with a trader at another Libor panel bank to make submissions.

The FCA judged that Mr Adolph “closed his mind” to the risk that these actions were improper.

He was also knowingly concerned in Deutsche’s failure to observe proper standards of market conduct, leading the FCA to determine that he is “not a fit and proper person to perform any regulated financial activity”.